Trying to make sense of a world gone mad.... blogging on Climate Change, War, Terror - plus local stuff about Bristol and music and more...

Saturday, November 15, 2008

Militarized Media

First the had the under-reported scandal of the Pentagon placing 'independent experts' into the media to push the Bu$h administration's case for war as 'message force multipliers';

Brig. Gen. David L. Grange doesn't wear a star on his shoulder much since his retirement in 1999. But he's on the list of retired officers the Pentagon has cultivated in an effort to influence domestic news coverage of military matters....In fact, Grange, a CNN analyst, was tagged as the most visible shill for the Pentagon since 2002....When Grange appeared again on CNN late last week, host Lou Dobbs made no mention of Grange's previous participation in the Pentagon program...But a Pentagon memo called them "message force multipliers." The Defense Department often paid their travel expenses and hired a private defense contractor to monitor everything the analysts said in public.

To keep the Pentagon happy, some Hollywood producers have been known to turn villains into heroes, remove central characters, change politically sensitive settings, or add military rescues to movies that require none. There are no bad guys in the military. No fraternization between officers and enlisted troops. No drinking or drugs. No struggles against bigotry. The military and the president can’t look bad (though the State Department and Canada can). “The only thing Hollywood likes more than a good movie is a good deal,” David Robb explains, and that’s why the producers of films like “Top Gun,” “Stripes” and “The Great Santini” have altered their scripts to accommodate Pentagon requests. In exchange, they get inexpensive access to the military locations, vehicles, troops and gear they need to make their movies.

But the past 12 years of semi-acknowledged collaboration were preceded by decades in which the CIA maintained a deep-rooted but invisible influence of Hollywood. How could it be otherwise? As the former CIA man Bob Baer - whose books on his time with the agency were the basis for Syriana - told us: "All these people that run studios - they go to Washington, they hang around with senators, they hang around with CIA directors, and everybody's on board."

"If you want to know about governments, all you have to know is two words: governments lie."I.F. Stone

"The State is an abstraction devouring the life of the people." Michael Bakunin

"...ironically, perhaps, the best organised dissenters in the world today are anarchists, who are busily undermining capitalism while the rest of the left is still trying to form committees."Jeremy Hardy